Thomas Hoover - Project Daedalus

"You're stalling. Whenever you don't-"

"You're right." She took out a cigarette, flicked her lighter, and drew a lungful of smoke. "Now I see why Pasiphae was such a number. This room does something to you."

"Not bad for starters."

She looked down, then smiled. "No, darling, you're just bluffing. I remember that well enough. Plenty of time for a cigarette."

"Some things improve with age." He studied her beautifully disheveled form. Now more than ever he realized she was scared. "Goddammit, enough. Talk to me."

"All right." She sighed, then leaned back on the ledge of the portico. "Well, to begin at the beginning, I've been seeing somebody lately."

"Make you a deal," he interrupted. "You spare me your stories and I'll spare you mine. This doesn't really seem the moment to start swapping indiscretions."

"I'll bet you've got plenty to swap yourself." She looked him over.

"Hold on a minute." Sure, there'd been women in and out of his life. He wasn't a priest. Besides, he liked women.

"Darling, relax." She patted his thigh. "We're both adults. You said you wanted to hear this, so for godsake listen. His name was Jerry Ackerman and… it started back about nine months ago. Since he was new, he'd drop by my office now and then. You know, to learn the ropes."

"What kind of ropes, exactly?"

"Really, Michael. Anyway, he wasn't exactly world class in the boudoir, if that makes you feel any better. Though needless to say I never told him that. Our little scene tonight would have blown his Brooklyn mind. Now does that preserve your precious male ego? He was just nice, and interesting."

"Was?"

"I'll get to that." She was tracing small circles on the alabaster. "Week before last he dropped off a computer disk at my office. Said he couldn't figure it out. And it was old, maybe two weeks. Which was unusual, especially for satellite intercepts, which this was. Normally we get them the same day. So I ran it through my desk station, figuring it couldn't be that big a deal." She paused nervously, then went on. "Well, the first part was encoded using one of the standard Soviet encryption systems we've had cracked for years, and it had a lot of proper names. But the rest of it was just a string of numbers. No matter what I tried, I got nothing but garbage."

"Really? I thought Fort Meade's football field of Cray supercomputers could crack anything."

"I thought so too. But this encryption was either so clever, or so simple, nothing seemed to click. I couldn't do it. I even began to wonder, maybe it's not a cipher at all. Maybe it's just some obscure foreign language. So I matrixed it against some we have in the data base. And, love, we've got them. A zillion megabytes of memory. Serbo-Croatian, Urdu, Basque…" She drew on her cigarette, sending a glow into the dark. Above them the rain continued to pound. "But I still couldn't find anything that would crack it."

"Doesn't sound like you." He drew her around and kissed her. "Half the time you're too smart for your own good."

"Apparently not smart enough." She hugged him back automatically, then continued. "When I told Jerry I couldn't break the encryption, he suddenly got very nervous. Said okay, then he'd just take it and try again himself. So I asked him to sign it out on my log. Just routine. And that's when he started acting strange. At first he refused, but finally he did it when I said, 'It's like this, sweet buns. No tickee, no washee.' By then he'd stopped coming over to my place and things had gotten a little strained at the edges, to put it mildly. So I didn't think too much about it at the time."

"Don't start telling me more about-"

"Michael, that was the last time anybody saw him. He just vanished. That night. There was even something in the paper. 'Mysterious disappearance.' The apartment where he lived had been dismantled. Top to bottom. Somebody must have thought he was holding out."

"And?"

"Well, it just so happened I still had it in computer memory, though that's a blatant violation of security procedures. Anyway, the next day I called Control and said what's with a certain file? Gave them the NSCID number. And they said, 'We have no record of that number.' Quote. They'd never heard of it. So it must have been a free-lance job for somebody outside. Whoever it was must have paid Jerry, or maybe blackmailed him, into getting me to take a crack at it. Which is why it was two weeks old. It wasn't NSA material at all. Somebody else wanted it, and I'm known far and wide as Ms. Give-Her-the-Tough-Ones."

"You always were the best."

"Right." She laughed, then reached into her purse and retrieved a three and a half inch gray computer disk. "And here it is. A complete copy. I've also got it stored on the eighty-meg hard drive of my Zenith Turbo 486 laptop back at the hotel." She tossed it to him. "Jerry's file. That's the good news. The bad news is, it's still encrypted."

He turned it in his fingers. Welcome to the new age, he thought, when thousands of pages can be packed onto a high-density disk the size of a casette tape.

She took out a compact from her purse and powdered her nose in the light of the candle, then turned and searched the stone for her crumpled dress. He thought he heard a sound from the hallway outside, but then decided it was just more thunder.

"So now what?" She finally found the dress and drew it loosely on, managing not to secure the bustline. "I've tried and tried to crack it, but nothing seems to click. After the preamble, there's nothing on there but a long string of numbers. Whatever it is, it's not any of the standard encryption systems." She reached to take it back. "Why am I telling you all this?"

"Because we've agreed, no more games."

"Darling, there're actually two reasons why I shouldn't. One is I hate to drag you into it, and the other… well, there's more."

"I'm waiting."

"Whatever's on here is part of something bigger. I know that because of the preamble, the section I can read." She pushed ahead, nervousness in her voice. "Anyway, that's when I decided I had to talk to you. About some of the things you used to work on."

He inhaled. "What are you talking about?"

"There were some proper names."

"I don't get-"

"In the preamble. One was 'Daedalus.' And another was 'Mino.' So I thought, why not talk to Michael? It sounded like something that you'd… I don't know… maybe you could help me think. Anyway, I finally decided to take a chance and ring you."

"Great. Nice to finally learn exactly where I fit in." He lay silent for a moment, trying to suppress his annoyance. Finally he told himself, Be constructive.

"All right, tell me what you think it's all about."

"Well." She paused again, as though unsure. Finally she spoke, her voice faint above the rain. "Did you know the Soviet Union and Japan never actually signed a peace treaty after World War Two?"

"It's because the Soviets kept some Japanese islands, right? Seem to recall they were the Kuriles, and also the southern half of Sakhalin."

"Japan calls those the Northern Territories, and they've refused to sign because of them." She reached over and adjusted the candle, surveying the dark around them. The gloom was almost Stygian. "Well, hang on to your diplomatic pouch, because I think they're about to sign. Maybe as the first step toward… I'm still not sure what."

He caught his breath. "How did you find out about this?"

"Intelligence. I've been handling our intercepts. But we still haven't put together a briefing package for the president, and State. It just seems so implausible nobody wants to be the one to sign off on it. Besides, nothing's settled. Among other things, the Japanese Diet would eventually have to vote to approve it, and nothing's come through diplomatic channels. It's being closely handled by somebody big and anonymous over there. Anyway, my hunch is a vote in the Diet would be a squeaker. Your average Japanese man on the street still isn't too enthusiastic about the Soviets."